Policy & Advocacy
Breakthrough’s mission is to support first-generation college aspirants to achieve postsecondary success. We fundamentally understand that, no matter how much determination our students display and how much support they receive from their families, schools, and Breakthrough, the educational system can present barriers and challenges that get in the way. Our mission is rooted in commitments to educational equity and the intertwined issues of health, economic, immigration, and racial justice, as the ability to go to school and realize one’s educational dreams is connected to many other factors in our society.
We are committed to supporting policies and institutional practices that directly impact college access and success and addressing policies and other root causes outside the educational sector that affect the quality of life of students and their families so they can be housed, healthy, and holistically supported to realize their goals.
Meet Our Advocacy Fellows
Five Breakthrough college students now make up the pilot cohort of Breakthrough’s Advocacy Fellows. Breakthrough’s policy and advocacy practice is driven by a core belief: youth and practitioners, the individuals who are navigating and are being personally impacted by inequitable educational policies, should be the leading voices in the construction and reform of those very policies. Advocacy Fellows will learn about state policy related to college access and success, build on and employ strategic communication and advocacy skills, and use their voices to advocate directly to state leaders during the 88th legislative session.
VALUES & APPROACH
Our policy and advocacy practice at Breakthrough is driven by a core belief: youth, families, and educators, the individuals who are navigating and being personally impacted by inequitable educational policies, should be the leading voices in the construction and reform of those policies. With nearly 3,500 Breakthrough students and families, as well as hundreds of educators at Breakthrough and at our partner schools, we have a grounded understanding of the challenges and opportunities to improve access and success in postsecondary education. Together, we can ensure that the best ideas are heard and valued by education and government institutions.
ADVOCACY ACTIONS
Breakthrough engages in policy advocacy at the legislative, institutional, and internal levels. These efforts include influencing federal, state, and local policymaking, supporting institutional change at middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities in our region, and developing and implementing better practices within Breakthrough’s own direct service model. We go about our advocacy work by:
Sharing Our Experience
We surface the challenges and the knowledge our students, families, advisors, and partner educators experience in our communities and education institutions. We co-create avenues for their experiences and expertise to be directly shared to educational institutions and policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels.
Collaborating with Other Advocates
We work in collaboration with coalitions and networks of educational equity advocates and district, higher education, and community-based partners to remove barriers across domains for Texas’s most marginalized students and families.
Improving Breakthrough’s Practices
We gather information and inspiration from policies that positively impact student success from our partner institutions and partner nonprofit agencies. We also surface ideas and opportunities directly from our students and families on ways our organization can improve its policies and practices to support more students in better ways.
2025 Policy Priorities
Prioritize Texas Student Wellbeing to Improve Degree Completion.
Texas students need and deserve legislators, advocates, and practitioners to work together to implement effective policies that support the mental and physical health necessary for postsecondary success.
Address college hunger and food insecurity at Texas colleges and universities by expanding student SNAP awareness and access for eligible college students.
Identify and implement strategies to sustain postsecondary student emergency aid programs by accessing dollars to maintain those established during the pandemic and pursuing new avenues to expand the most effective programs.
Invest in student success strategies on college campuses that support mental health and well-being, including utilizing emergency aid as a tool to support students struggling with mental health, increasing the number and quality of campus-based counseling resources, improving staff training campus-wide, and providing social workers to support the navigation of basic and wellbeing needs.
Promote Higher Education Affordability in Texas.
Texas financial aid has failed to keep pace with today’s postsecondary affordability challenges and must adapt to reflect today’s students’ experiences and needs. Breakthrough CTX urges Texas policymakers to prioritize adequate investment in financial aid.
Increase state investment in need-based grants for students with the greatest financial need, like the Toward EXcellence, Access, and Success Grant (TEXAS grant), Texas Educational Opportunity Grant (TEOG), and Tuition Equalization Grant (TEG), including proposals to guarantee funding from these sources to the top 25% of Texas-eligible high school graduates.
Ensure accessible aid for Texas students attending four-year, two-year, and community colleges, including in-state tuition and state grants for all eligible Texas high school graduates, regardless of immigration status.
Facilitate access to portable aid for students to support their transitions within their institution and vertically or horizontally to other institutions while exploring the feasibility of including private and independent institutions in the HB8 transfer outcome.
Sustain investment in the state’s community colleges and four-year postsecondary institutions, including fully funding HB8 and considering ways to reduce growth in tuition and expenses that are passed along to students.
Ensure Excellent Educational Opportunities for K-12 Students.
All students deserve to attend excellent, well-funded public schools that prepare them to succeed in their postsecondary education and career.
Implement fair funding by determining the actual costs and needs of public schools and programs and funding them accordingly, including through investment in the basic allotment to raise per-pupil funding for all students and adjusting for inflation.
Address the teacher shortage and its unequal impacts on students and school communities by expanding incentives and quality training for prospective and current teachers, as well as clearly articulating pathways to certification and placement in the educator workforce.
Keep public dollars in public schools by opposing vouchers and similar programs and reinvesting state savings realized through the growth of local school district property value back into public schools.
Protect a young person’s right to a high-quality education in Texas K-12 public schools, regardless of national origin or citizenship status.
Support All Students to Prepare For and Succeed in College and Career. Texas
Texas schools are responsible for preparing all students to succeed in college, but not all students meet readiness benchmarks or are adequately prepared for college and lifelong success. These disparities disproportionately affect historically marginalized Black, Latino, emergent bilingual students, and students from low-income households.
Invest in early college high school models and expand counseling support for Texas students starting in middle school by making investments to increase the number and capacity of counselors and advisors to support middle school and high school students’ college readiness and postsecondary transitions.
Provide effective college and career preparation for young Texans by ensuring that all students are prepared with rigorous curriculum and instructional materials that reflect students’ backgrounds and by removing gaps in access to advanced coursework.
Map clear pathways to high-value credentials and degrees, including strategies to boost credit mobility and transferability between postsecondary institutions, advance the stackability of credits and credentials, and develop robust, aligned data systems that track academic pathways and outcomes.
Protect policies that make higher education more accessible to all Texans, like automatic admissions, including the Top Ten Percent Rule.
We hope you find the information useful and we hope you can share your support for these initiatives to elected officials and to leaders at education institutions. Together we can promote policies that lead to more college breakthroughs across our region and beyond.